


My Sister's Keeper

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25458286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: Beatrice writes a lot of letters to Ava that she doesn't intend to give her. At first.
Relationships: Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva
Comments: 380
Kudos: 1133





	1. Chapter 1

In the ancient, vaguely musty quiet of the Andalusian morning, the hinges of a wooden box sigh softly. The box is small, and it lives on the top of Beatrice’s bureau. In it, she keeps a handful of items that would mean little to anyone else, but mean a great deal to her. A St. Christopher medallion, a handful of French coins from when she studied there for a semester, a silk ribbon that belonged to a girl of whom she had once been very fond. Trifles that she keeps close to her heart, that are secret only because the contents of her heart are secret. 

France had been a masterpiece of color and light, and Beatrice had felt romanced by the spring winds themselves, and the beat of shoes against the cobblestones in the French Quarter. She had fallen in love there, mostly with the idea of falling in love; love, she had decided, was not actually a thing meant for her, except for the divine love of God, naturally. 

Love manifests strangely, she had learned. The girl, who had been her roommate, had also been guarded and soft spoken, and they understood that they had more in common than they voiced aloud. Beatrice’s eyes would sometimes get caught on that red silk ribbon that the girl used to tie back her hair, that flash of red that seemed somehow so lurid in a world of grey habits and black training clothes.

The red silk ribbon sometimes makes her heart clench up like a fist, even now, as she thinks of the desperate way she would stare at it in the girl’s dark hair, not even knowing what she wanted from it, perhaps jealously wishing she could wind herself through the girl’s hair. But no, not even that. It is safer to let some things remain abstractions. 

The box has gained a new tenant today, though. It is a folded piece of thick, creamy paper, covered with neat lines of Beatrice’s flawless handwriting. It is neither harmless, nor abstract. The lock that had long been on the box’s face will be employed for the first time. It reads: 

> _ Growth is the raw, new part of oneself that appears when the pain of moving forward peels back that which we no longer need. You, Ava, are every bit that raw, new thing, and I have watched you grow, and outgrow, the self that you began to shed the day the Halo sank into your back. When a flower blooms, the thick green flesh of the bud shrinks, dries up, and falls away, to make room for the bursting bloom that succeeds it. The protective hull is no longer needed. But it is not because the bloom is stronger than the bud that held it; in fact, as you no doubt know, a flower’s petals are easily crushed. It is because the bloom is too beautiful to be obscured any longer, and must be seen and shared, must let the sun touch it, must be known, admired, watered and quenched.  _
> 
> _ It is nearly a year that I have watched this process, watched you shed that protective casing; the selfish needs, the want for pleasures of the flesh, the food and wine and drugs and sex and all of those elements of the mortal life that you were so sure you needed. They have wilted and fallen away. And now you have become this bloom.  _
> 
> _ A fearsome bloom, to be sure. What you lack in skill, you have more than compensated for in heart. When you accept my instruction, your focus is singular and entirely upon me; I feel like the sun, shining onto a flower that hungers for more light than I can ever hope to give it. You are vulnerable; I have flung myself into the path of arrows for you, and would throw myself into the path of a hundred more, to keep the incomparable blossom of you from being harmed.  _
> 
> _ My heart aches to know what it is to be so wildly fragile and beautiful, so open to light, so ready to be watered, and fear of everything else be damned. To watch you grow and shed the confines of what you thought you were is one of the greatest joys I have known. I would watch it again and again, despite the ache in my own heart; it makes me long to burst free of this bud which I have spent a lifetime tending with the intention that it should never be opened.  _
> 
> _ But what good is a flower that does not bloom, Ava? What good? The longing I feel is stubborn because this question has no answer. _
> 
>   
>    
> 

****

  
  
  


Camila tends the roses outside the rectory. It’s not her job, but she loves them. Beatrice has never asked why, and rarely participated in the task. 

“It’s the season,” Camila says happily, “they’re all going to be opening in another week or so, I think.” 

Today, Beatrice stops and takes up a pair of shears. “Can I help?”

“Really?” 

Beatrice nods. 

Camila grins and points to a bit of overgrowth on one of the stems. “That one, if you don’t mind.” 

They work quietly while Camila hums a little song that Beatrice doesn’t recognize. “Why do you love this task so much?” Beatrice wonders. 

Camila murmurs something to one of the roses and pulls a few dead leaves off before answering. “Our lives are the Cat’s Cradle walls,” she says. “It’s nice to cultivate something beautiful inside them.” 

Beatrice considers her. “There's a lot of beauty here.” 

“Meh,” Camila says. “Statues. But these are alive. They remind me that I’m alive. That we’re all alive. Don’t you think it’s nice, helping something beautiful grow?” 

Beatrice smiles. Incautious as she enjoys Camila’s unguarded sweetness, she pricks herself one of the thorns. She frowns. “Do you normally strip the thorns?” 

“No. They’re part of what makes it beautiful.” 

  
  


****

  
  
  


Another letter takes residence in the locked box. 

> _ Ava,  _
> 
> _ Each day that we cross swords I see your skill improving. I wish I could express to you the pride I feel in your progress, but I fear it would go to your head. Or perhaps I fear that what I expressed would be something more than the pride that is permissible under the circumstances.  _
> 
> _ I am drowning sometimes in the wish to inhabit your skin, to understand what it is to be you; brave you, foolhardy you, dangerous you – kind, caring, loving you. You’ve learned a little about secrecy and subtlety from me, and I sometimes almost wish you would unlearn it. I’ve become fond of your gentleness and humor, but in some respects, I suppose I am more fond of your ragged edges, your unvarnished thoughts, your thorns. I see nothing false in you. It frightens me and yet also enthralls me. I’m envious, fascinated, confused.  _
> 
> _ You are the only person who ever told me that I was beautiful. But how can you know it when you don’t know what I’m like when I’m open? I don’t even know what I’m like when I’m open. But I come closest to it at times when I’m with you.  _
> 
> _ I write these letters to understand what I feel. There is nothing in them that should be secret and yet they live in the box with all the other secrets of mine that are not secrets. I am like Camila with her roses; they are not really hers, yet tending to them and helping them bloom and grow brings lightness and joy to her life. And even when the thorns prick, it matters little. It’s always worth the trouble.  _
> 
> _ When one looks at you, Ava, one can articulate the change in you; you were dead, and are now alive. You were selfish, and now you are giving -- mostly. You were no kind of warrior, and now you can wield the sword as you were meant to do. But me? I know that I am changed for knowing you, that the change is a process still unfolding, and yet I cannot put words to what I am now. Perhaps it’s because I’ve told you my secrets. I was alone, and now I’m not. _
> 
>   
>    
> 

_ **** _

  
  


Beatrice is lying flat on her back for the third time. Mary’s knee is pressed into her chest. 

“What the hell’s up with you, girl?” 

“Language,” Beatrice scolds. Her mind is in any number of places, none of them the sparring mat. 

“You never let me kick your ass like this,” Mary goes on. 

“ _ Language _ ,” Beatrice says again, more emphatically. 

Ava comes flitting through the training space on her way to somewhere else. She stops, sees the tableau of Mary having defeated Beatrice rather soundly, and exclaims, “Oh, shit! What happened, Mr. Miyagi?” 

Beatrice lifts her head to call out “language!” yet again, but Ava is already gone. “I give up,” she sighs into the vaulted ceiling. 

Mary sucks her teeth and stands, liberating Beatrice and allowing her to breathe properly again. “So it’s like that.” 

“I’ve asked her to stop calling me Mr. Miyagi but she won’t,” Beatrice grumbles. 

But Mary isn’t fooled by her dodge. “I wasn’t born yesterday, and neither was Ava.” 

“She was born  _ again _ yesterday, though,” Beatrice parries. “That must count for something.” 

Mary looks at her sympathetically. “I understand, it’s a lot.  _ She’s _ a lot.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Beatrice knows exactly what she’s talking about. She flushes, despite herself. 

“Okay.” Mary throws up her hands. “Just know, you ain’t foolin’ anybody, including Ava. She’s a dipshit, but she understands more than you think.” 

Beatrice takes a breath to scold but Mary scoffs and turns around. “Yeah, I know, language. It ain’t always about the rules, Bea.” 

  
  


****

  
  


Another letter is written:

> _ The odd thing about secrets is that they exist in two states at once. There is a pleasure to keeping them, to having something that is only yours, keeping something close. Thou shalt not covet, the commandments say, and yet there is pleasure in it. Yet at the same time, the secret also burns to get out, sits like a hot coal in the pocket, craving oxygen, aching to catch fire. I’ve learned to live with both these states when it comes to all my secrets; I keep certain things to myself, and enjoy them that way, even as they sometimes grow too hot for me to stand, even as they burn brighter than the Halo in your back.  _
> 
> _ I write letters, I have come to understand, not because I need to map out what I feel. I know perfectly well what I feel. It runs deeper than mountains and taps oceans older than the world. It glows with the light of the divine, and draws me to you, inexorably. I write these letters to make these secrets tangible so they can live in the place where I keep such things. It brings them one step closer to the light, one step closer to release.  _
> 
> _ There are so many kinds of sin, Ava, and I have studied them all. Perhaps I was looking for a loophole. But I cannot tolerate any longer the sin of lying, for that is what secrecy is, at its core. It is withholding truth. This is the reason that secrets burn to be shared. Because that in itself is a sin.  _
> 
> _ Yes, call me a sinner, then. I have kept my secrets, or tried. But I expect you know already. At times I feel you look at me in a way that reflects back every longing I have ever felt for you, every urge I have ever struggled with to share this burning coal in my pocket. I ask nothing of you, but I cannot abide this one sin, the sin of you not knowing, not receiving confirmation, of the love that has grown in my heart for you all of this time. My frame of reference for such feelings is limited; I hardly even know what I want it to mean. I only know that I am more alive when I’m with you, I’m growing, I’m opening, and I could not stop this process if I wanted to.  _
> 
> _ But I don’t want to.  _
> 
> _ I want you to be  _ _ my _ _ secret, yes, and to  _ _ know _ _ that you are my secret. I want to keep you greedily in my heart and beside my body and know you in ways that no-one else does. I want to translate you into a hundred languages that run off my tongue like a psalm every time I say your name. I want you to be the alpha of my morning and the omega of my night. I want you to cradle every whisper of mine inside your chest and I want you to want the same of me, as desperately as I do. I covet you, and yes, it is a sin, but it is not a sin to tell you so.  _
> 
> _ Perhaps I’ve said too much. As you say, a bad habit.  _

  
  


****

This last letter is placed in the box, in chronological order, tied together with the red silk ribbon. Beatrice leaves the box on Ava’s bed while she’s out on a scouting trip with Mary. 

She doesn’t know what will happen. She’s not sure it matters. She has committed to the idea that she loves Ava desperately and that the words needed to be said. She has no idea what she wants from it, what else she expects to come after it, what Ava will say. She trusts that Ava won’t hurt her, even if she doesn’t feel the same. That trust has grown over time, and Beatrice feels clear, confident in her decision. The secret, she decides, is the sin. Not the love. 

She sits in the sanctuary as the evening creeps in, swaddled in her habit, listening to Camila play a pretty little hymn that she’d heard once before: 

_ “And love will hold us together _

_ Make us a shelter to weather the storm _

_ And I’ll be my sister’s keeper _

_ So the whole world would know that we’re not alone…” _

Oddly content, Beatrice listens to Camila’s singing and watches the sun go down through the west window. She knows Ava will be back eventually, and that whatever happens, it will be alright. 

_ “It’s waiting for you _

_ Knockin' at your door! _

_ Every moment of truth _

_ When your heart hits the floor…” _

The view from the Cat’s Cradle overlooking the countryside has never been more beautiful, the sunset touching the hills with orange and gold. 

Ava’s footsteps come thudding across the floor of the sanctuary. She stops in front of Beatrice’s chair, breathing heavily, and drops a folded piece of paper in her lap with a little smile, and stomps away. 

Beatrice opens the paper. It says, in handwriting like a fourth grader's: 

> _ Jesus, Bea, it’s not fair, you know I can’t write like that! Yes, I love you too. No, I don’t know what it means either. Let’s figure it out. I want to.  _
> 
> _ And by the way, bad habit was my pun first. How dare you.  _
> 
> _ Meet me in your room. _


	2. A Hundred Little Acts of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ava and Beatrice begin to find their way together.
> 
> Yeah, I wrote a little more. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Beatrice has spent a lifetime making her steps soundless, but she abandons caring about it as she hurries to her chamber and throws the heavy door open a little more dramatically than she intends. 

Ava sits on her bed, cross legged, still in leather pants and chain mail, barefoot. Hair down in straw colored waves, rumpled, tired, smirking, she is no less the sight Beatrice craves. She crosses herself.

Ava laughs. “The mission went fine, thanks.” She pats the mattress. “Come on. Let’s talk.”

Beatrice takes off her wimple and folds it carefully, then sits down a few inches from Ava on the bed. 

“So,” Ava begins, “I’m pretty sure your vows don’t let you, uh, have a girlfriend.”

“And I’m pretty sure a lot of what I swore myself to was a lie. But it takes time to unlearn nevertheless.”

Ava’s eyes turn sly, and she leans forward. “Hopefully, I can help,” she says. Instinctively, before she can even think about it, Beatrice draws back. 

“Sorry,” Beatrice mutters, and her cheeks flush at Ava’s confused look. “Force of— well, you know.”

Ava tilts her head and regards her gently for a moment. “Ok. I … I kind of get it. I think.” She holds out her hand. “Here, just… just give me your hand.”

Beatrice pauses. “Aren’t you supposed to promise me you don’t bite?”

“Don’t worry, I think biting is a little advanced for us,” Ava chuckles.

Flushing again, Beatrice places her hand in Ava’s, and for a moment, she stops breathing. 

“You’ve touched me a billion times in training and stuff,” Ava points out. 

“Yes, but I had an excuse.”

Ava’s eyes twinkle, and she strokes the back of Beatrice’s hand with her fingertips. Lightly, as if whispering something sacred. Beatrice’s chest aches, and these gentle strokes of Ava’s fingers are writ like flame on her skin. This, she thinks, this alone would be enough to satisfy her. 

“Our excuse is…” Ava turns Beatrice’s hand over, rests it palm up. “...we love each other.” Beatrice closes her eyes as Ava pushes her sleeve up, and traces those same soft fingers over the inside of her wrist and up her forearm a few inches. Beatrice can’t say how long this goes on, but she sighs.

Ava pauses. “Is it too much?”

“Yes,” says Beatrice. “But don’t stop. Please.”

These touches overwhelm her senses but she wants them all the same. It’s too much to explain why. She lets Ava’s touch stir a riot of joys and hungers in her that are too large and too many to pick through. Her heart races, overfull. 

Beatrice opens her eyes to find Ava looking at her in a way that is hard to pin down: fascinated, besotted – in love, for want of a better term. “Are you okay? You seem to be …  _ really _ … enjoying that.”

“I am,” Beatrice says breathlessly. But a worry flits in and lights on her shoulder. She pulls her hand away. “But what if… what if this is all it is?”

Ava gives her a bemused expression. “What do you mean?”

“What if that’s all I can ever…?”

Ava squeezes her hand, and her grip is warm and a little sweaty, but so pleasant. “Bea. There are no rules for what a relationship is supposed to look like between a nun and a dead girl.”

Beatrice looks away, laughing but embarrassed. “Clearly not, but–“

“But nothing. What do I know about  _ relationships _ ? Not more than you, really. Maybe, you know, we just … don’t worry about that stuff for a while?”

“You won’t be dissatisfied?”

Ava, mercifully, curls her hands around Beatrice’s wrist. “I’m still new. I want to know everything.  _ Everything _ . If this is what love is like, with you, then I want to know it.” She clambers up the bed and lies down, wedging herself close to the wall so that Beatrice has room to lay beside her. “Come on. Stop worrying.”

Beatrice lays down next to Ava, staring at the ceiling, hardly daring to believe someone loves her this way. Ava’s weight displaces the mattress so that Beatrice is tilted into her body a little bit, and they lie side by side, listening to each other’s breathing. 

“It’s hard to explain… I’m feeling too much,” Beatrice says at length. 

“It’s okay. Just write me a letter.”

Ava takes her hand again, and begins to stroke her arm some more. 

Intimacy. Bliss. Heaven.    
  


******

_ Ava, _

_ I’ve spent my life behind walls that are high and hard to climb. It stands to reason then that my heart should belong to someone with a gift for passing through them.  _

_ I know I spoke little tonight, but you must understand that the tide of thoughts and feelings is vast and my capacity to release them limited. The waves are ocean-sized. How could they ever be expected to fit through the tiny opening of the spoken word? It must come drop by drop.  _

_ And so the drops come – the tips of your fingers on the tender skin of my wrist, marking the blue veins where my blood sings at the sight of you. Tu me touche avec des doigts du ciel – you touch me with the fingers of heaven. So small a thing, yet you have already known me as no-one else has.  _

_ The drops come – these letters in which I try to tame these towering longings enough to express them to you.  _

_ For a soul starved of touch, such small, tender gestures are a rapture. It is late, and still I lie awake, nursing and re-living each stroke of your fingers in my memory. I am terrified to imagine more, but hungry to feel it again. This is the thrill of learning first words in a new language, one of your affection for me. It is the anxious anticipation of wanting to speak it fluently back to you, and the fear of tripping on the words.  _

_ It it is already more than I ever dared to want.  _

  
  


*****

  
  


Ava sits next to Lilith at a table, chin on hands. 

“So, I don’t get it. Why does he do it? I mean, he’s literally God.” 

Lilith is impatient, but tries to rein it in. “It’s the lesson. It’s to show them that he’s not any better than any one of them. But in doing so, he shows them that none of them is any better than the other, either.” 

“They’re a brotherhood,” Ava says after a moment. “The disciples are a brotherhood.”

“And brothers are meant to care for one another. The strength lies in family and community. Brotherly love. Do you understand?” 

Ava squints, reading over the passage again. Lilith has been working with her on her reading and writing. It’s been getting better but it’s still slow. “So… but…” She huffs. “Everyone knows about washing your hands before dinner, right, but… your feet?”

“It was ancient Israel. They wore sandals and walked around on dirty roads all day. And when they sat, it wasn’t like the paintings you see like the Last Supper, where they’re all seated in tall chairs around a big table like this one.” She knocks on the thick wood of the table they’re sitting at. “The tables were low to the ground. Everyone sat cross-legged. You could really see everyone’s feet.” 

“And smell them too, I bet,” Ava chortled. 

Lilith levels her with an unamused look. 

Ava doesn’t mind. She’s busy thinking. 

*****

  
  


Beatrice is exhausted. Even in high, heavy boots, her footsteps are quiet as she pushes open the door to her room. She has been slogging the streets of a small village today, searching for something she was unable to find. 

Ava is sitting on her bed, waiting for her. On the bureau next to the bed sits a small metal basin. It’s late, and candles burn in sconces on the walls, casting their soft orange glow. 

“Built in mood lighting,” Ava says, eyes dancing. 

Beatrice is pleased to see her, but is tired and aching to change out of her tactical clothes. “You’re here,” she says with an exhausted smile. 

Ava spreads her hands wide. “Ta-da!” She gets up, approaches Beatrice, and begins to help her unbuckle and doff the various layers of straps and sheaths. The release of those pressures is palpable, and her shoulder muscles begin to unknot themselves. 

“Thank you,” she whispers. Ava is close, and that is all that matters. The stone walls of her chamber are a quiet sanctum. “I’m glad for the assistance.” 

Ava guides her to the edge of the bed, and she sits, sinks into the mattress, and watches with bewilderment as Ava kneels down in front of her and begins unbuckling her boots. The Halo Bearer, kneeling before her? Surely this couldn’t be right.

“Oh,” she objects weakly, “you needn’t–”

“Sh,” Ava says. “I’m here to help.” 

Beatrice goes quiet and they share a warm, affectionate gaze as Ava unbuckles strap after strap on Beatrice’s tall boots, then lifts each foot and slides them off, one and then the other. Her swollen feet sigh with relief. She shivers as Ava’s gentle hands slide up her tight trouser leg and get hold of the heavy, black sock she’s wearing. “Oh, you don’t want to–” 

“Yeah, I do.” Ava is firm. 

She slides the sock off, and does the same on the other foot. She never looks away from Beatrice’s face. She reaches up and takes the metal basin. Steam curls from it, and a faint scent of clean, vaguely floral soap. A cloth floats in the suds piled on the surface of the water. Beatrice understands her intention. “Oh… Ava, you… I’m not…” She flushes. The words escape her. 

But Ava reaches into the basin, takes the cloth and squeezes it out. Cupping Beatrice’s heel in one hand, she says softly, “You are. I want to take care of you. Will you let me?” 

Beatrice has always hated her feet. And she especially hates them now, puffy and red, crossed with indentations from her boot straps, sweaty… 

“You’re beautiful,” Ava says. “Everything you are, everything about you. Please?” 

Beatrice acquiesces. She doesn’t think she has it in her to say no. And Ava’s touch is so delicate. The first swipe of cloth across the top of her foot is so pleasant, she can hardly stand it. Ava takes the warm, wet cloth and slowly works over her ankles, down and around her heel, and drags it deep along the arch of her foot. Beatrice sighs. She has come back from a thousand missions, a thousand training ops, with tired, aching feet, and this is the first time anyone has thought to care for her this way. The pressure is gentle enough not to hurt, firm enough not to tickle. Ava dips the cloth again and squeezes it and the water runs down in warm rivulets, trickles over the top of her foot and down between her toes. 

“You deserve this,” Ava murmurs, wrapping the cloth around the ball of her foot and squeezing tightly. When she releases the pressure, the tension in those muscles releases too. Beatrice sighs deeply, and Ava smiles at her. 

“I’m not so sure,” Beatrice says, but the warmth has risen from her foot and into her chest, her heartbeat a loud and clamoring sound. 

“Sh.” 

Ava continues ministering to her, gazing at her affectionately, and Beatrice goes quiet again. She is one giant ache, and even as she wants to feel Ava’s hands on the rest of her body, she wants to wait, wants to want it just a little longer. She wants to feel the thrill of each new touch, each new wall that Ava breaches with ease, each new part of herself that she longs to give to this girl who has come to mean more to her than she ever thought possible. The craving is a thousand times more pleasant knowing that it may sometimes soon be satisfied. She is in no hurry, and neither, it appears, is Ava.

“One day,” Ava says to her, as she takes the other foot in hand, “maybe I’ll get to know every last inch of you. But I’m happy to start here, with these. I love these inches, right here.” 

Her cheeks glowing, Beatrice mumbles, “There are more where that came from.” 

*****

  
  


_ Ava, _

_ I can hardly imagine feeling closer with someone than I felt with you tonight. It is desire, yes, but it is hardly something as pedestrian as lust. You came to me, placed yourself in the position to serve, and this is the essence of love, something higher than the collision of hormones and shared worldview that passes for it most times. I cannot even contemplate sex, cannot dwell in its specifics, but you, Ava, have made love to me tonight, whether you intended to or not. I expect you did.  _

_ So the ocean comes. Drop by drop. Inch by inch. A hundred little acts of love that make us mean more to each other than anyone else. I remain plagued from time to time by the fear that what we are together is a sin, yet you confirm again and again that what draws us together is selfless, pure, and divine.  _

_ And if I am being honest, your touch is so sweet, that if it is a sin, I will gladly pay the price for it.  _


	3. Body Awareness

Spring is fully upon the Cat’s Cradle, and blooms burst everywhere. Pomegranate flowers and bluebells spill over the marble edges of the flower beds, and little stars of white dot the vines that climb the walls. Beatrice is reminded of her spring in Paris, where the love she felt there was focused toward nothing and nobody in particular. But here, she is watching Ava and Camila work together, and her heart sighs. 

They are in the courtyard and Camila has a blindfold around Ava’s eyes, training her to listen and feel things approaching without using her sight. The Halo Bearer struggles with this new skill. 

“Her body awareness needs work,” Beatrice comments. 

Mary pats her on the back. “She just got the thing. Give her a break. There’s probably parts of her ass she still hasn’t even scratched yet.” 

Beatrice swallows a laugh. She doesn’t bother to correct Mary’s language. The point she makes is important. 

  
  
  


****

  
  


Ava and Beatrice sit on Ava’s bed, in a warm shaft of afternoon light coming through the window. Relaxed, in their loose, dark training clothes, Ava’s head is down, chin to chest, her hair spilling in waves that cover her face. Beatrice sits behind her, fingers curled, and with more delight than she begin to express, she scratches Ava’s back in long, slow strokes. Ava is groaning with pleasure. 

“Ssh,” Beatrice whispers. “They’ll think something is going on in here.” 

“Something _is_ going on in here,” Ava chuckles. “Just because it’s not sex, doesn’t mean it’s nothing.” Her breath is a little short, a little thick. “This is a new feeling. Brand new, actually, and– _oh my dog_ – it’s really, really good.” 

A simple creature comfort. But Beatrice understands. “Nobody’s ever scratched your back for you?” 

“Who? When?” Ava laughs. “Why this, anyway?” 

“You don’t know your own body, so how can you have the body awareness to master the exercise Camilla was teaching you?” 

“Oh, so this is purely academic?” 

“Purely.” Beatrice drags her fingers down in between Ava’s shoulder blades and scratches, and her heart stumbles at the little purrs and gurgles of happiness that Ava makes. 

Beatrice’s strong fingers move with firm purpose up and down Ava’s back and discover where she most likes to be scratched. In between the shoulder blades seems to get a particularly powerful response. Beatrice is lost in pursuing this soft, gentle physicality between them for several minutes, until Ava asks her: “So tell me, Mr. Miyagi. What’s the story with the other things in the box?” 

The box. The box that had delivered her letters to Ava and brought them down this path. Beatrice had nearly forgotten. “They’re just… things I treasure.” 

“But why?” 

So Beatrice confesses to her infatuation with Paris in spring, and how those franc coins, though no longer in official circulation, would turn up sometimes in one’s change. How they were totems that would summon the bliss she felt as she walked through the Jardin des Tuileries, how it was bursting with colors and dotted with statues, marble monuments of the passion of the human soul. When Ava asks about the ribbon, Beatrice falls silent for a moment and stops moving her hands. 

“It belonged to a girl,” she says quietly. 

Ava pauses. Beatrice doesn’t know why she’s suddenly afraid. “Did you... love her?” 

“I didn’t know I did,” Beatrice says. “Looking at it now, the obviousness of it is…. Painful. But I did.” She stumbles, but does her best to explain how she would stare it in the girl’s hair, obsess over the bright red flash of silk among her dark waves. How she would stare at her as she’d weave it around her nimble fingers and into her braid. 

“You couldn’t let yourself be in love with her,” Ava murmured, thinking aloud, “but her hair ribbon… that was just a thing, so that was okay.” 

Grief stirs in Beatrice at the memory of her own feeling for the girl, crushed so deep and so small that she couldn’t bear to even acknowledge it. 

“What was her name?” 

Beatrice curls her fingers around Ava’s shoulders. She can’t even let herself say it. 

“It’s okay,” Ava persists. “That can’t hurt you now. If you want to be close to me, I need to know all the hurts. All the… the _stuff_.” 

Once again, Ava is passing through a wall that Beatrice once thought secure. She tilts her head forward and rests her forehead against Ava’s shoulder. The girl’s name brings with it a rush of guilt, doubt, self-hatred. “Jolie,” she whispers, her voice tight and caught in her throat. “Her name was Jolie, it means ‘pretty’ in French.” And then, in spite of her best attempts to remain strong, a few hot tears slip from her eyes and onto Ava’s shoulder. 

Ava tips her head back and rests it against Beatrice’s as best she can. “Hey,” she says, “you held me once when I was hurting. Can I do that for you now?”

Beatrice allows Ava to turn around, and put her arms around Beatrice. She cries in Ava’s embrace for several minutes. 

“You’re not that person anymore. You don’t have to hate yourself anymore,” Ava soothes her, rubbing her back with one hand. “You know how you feel now, and you know that I love you. And whatever that means, whatever way we do it, it’s good. It’s good.” 

“I’m hungry,” Beatrice sighs after a little while. 

“Let’s eat, then,” Ava says. “Race you to the dining hall.”

  
  
  


****

  
  


> _Ava,_
> 
> _You no doubt know, because you have gone through your own growth processes this last year, that growth means pain at times. Jolie’s name is forever attached to a time in my life when I was crushed by my own desire to grind my heart to dust, compulsively trying to wash the stain of a sin I had not committed, one that I had been afraid to commit even in the confines of my own heart. That shame, that fear– now that who I am has become too much for me to ignore, I face these feelings anew._
> 
> _I have broken myself, and now I must remake if I am to love you in the way that my heart longs to do. These scars that wrap around my soul are no less tender for being so old. So if I am to love you properly, I must let them heal. If they are to heal, I must forgive myself. It would help to know whether God forgives me. But until such time as he writes his absolution in flames on my doorstep, I shall have to do my best._
> 
> _So to touch you, to please you as I did today, it is my step. To let you hold me in my moment of grief and shame, it is my step. Everything I give to you, everything I do for you, everything I share with you, is the best of myself that I can muster in that moment. Each expression of love for you is also an act of forgiveness to myself._
> 
> _Faith and love, forgiveness and hope. These are the coins I turn over and over, and shall do until I see my face in theirs. I have more to give, Ava, if you can continue in patience and love as you have done. Your flower overgrows these walls._

  
  


****

  
  


“Oh my dog,” Ava exclaims, looking around Camilla’s chamber. Beatrice has been working hard to train her away from taking the lord’s name in vain, and it has been mostly working, even if she can’t seem to stop cussing. 

The room is bristling with plants: silver queens, aglaonema, little flowerpots, big ones, hyacinths, a pot of what must be twenty morning glories growing upwards around a wooden stake. It smells green, a little oasis of life among the great stones of the walls. “How do you even live in here with all these plants?” 

Camilla smiles. “Everyone has to have something that’s just theirs. My plants are mine. Mary likes to work with wood. Beatrice plays violin.” 

“She does?”

Camilla nods. “She doesn’t brag about it but she’s kind of amazing. She plays violin _way_ better than I play piano.” 

Ava has heard Camilla’s cautious fiddlings on the piano. They get the point across, but it really is her sweetness and sense of inclusion that makes it something the sisters tend to commune around. Ava glances around and sees a small wooden shelf lined with little clear bottles of liquid, all with droppers in them. “What’s all that? Your stash?” 

Camilla laughs and points to the labels. “No, I do extractions from my plants. Um, I have rose of course, because we have so many, but also gardenia, lilac, lavender, bluebell, aloe of course, and um, honeysuckle–”

“Can I smell?” 

****

  
  


Beatrice finds a note on her bed that says, _Please come see me when you’re free._

She knocks on Ava’s door.

“Come in!” comes the muffled reply.

She pushes the door open and finds Ava, sitting on her bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, reading by lamplight. She puts the book aside and looks up at her. Beatrice gasps softly; Ava’s hair is twisted up in a messy braid, and winding through it is the red silk ribbon. 

Concern crosses Ava’s face. “Is it alright?” 

Beatrice raises a hand to her lips for a moment, unsure. “Why?” she finally asks.

“I want you to do with me what you were too afraid to do back then. With her.”

Beatrice takes off her wimple, carefully folds it, and sets it on the bare bureau. After all this time, the thought occurs, Ava has still not really made this space her own. After a moment of hesitation, she settles down behind Ava on the bed, and spends a long moment just fingering the red silk, stroking it where it shines in the light and then disappears into Ava’s honey-colored hair. “It isn’t as much as you think,” she says shyly. “What I want.”

“I don’t care what it is,” Ava says firmly. “I just want you to do it. My wounds heal all by themselves. Yours? We have to work on them.” 

Beatrice settles a hand on Ava’s shoulder, and simply spends a few minutes tracing the path of the shiny silk with her fingertip. She covets every inch of it, lets herself envy it for being tangled up in Ava’s hair. Then she slips her finger into the loose plait, and tugs the end of the ribbon free, a little at a time. She loves the luxury of undoing the braid, pulling the ribbon out bit by bit. Ava’s hair is so soft, and the bright silk of the ribbon is a little hook in Beatrice’s heart as she lets it free. Every inch is a little more freedom. She moves slowly, delaying, because she doesn’t know what she will do with her hands once the braid is undone and the ribbon loosed from it, but once it lays loose in her hand, she lets it flutter to the floor, and then with both her hands, delves into the Ava’s hair, digs her fingers into it, lets its silky texture pass between her fingers as she slowly combs through it. Ava sighs, and the contentment of it is almost too much. 

Beatrice rakes her fingers in again, draws her short nails along Ava’s scalp, massaging it as she moves through again. She starts on the right side of her head, draws her hands across the top, pulls the soft, curly tresses through her fingers again. So much hair, such beautiful hair, she thinks. She takes the bulk of it in her hand and tilts her head down to breathe in its scent – flowery, sweet. 

“Your hair,” she sighs, “it smells like–”

“Honeysuckles,” Ava supplies. 

Beatrice buries her face in Ava’s hair and breathes deeply, then releases a sigh. “I’m fond of that scent,” she murmurs, and it is the understatement of the millennium.

She winds the sandy tresses through her fingers, breathes their scent in, kisses them. She gathers them up and then lets them spill down Ava’s back, thick and inviting. She digs through them again, to trace her fingertips down the back of Ava’s neck and smiles when she feels the shudder such a touch elicits. She draws her touch along Ava’s hairline and then down the sides, back to her ears, spends a moment tracing them, too. And in all of it, Ava is happy, Beatrice can feel it. She is pliable, responding, enjoying this sweetness between them. 

“And if this is all?” Beatrice murmurs into her ear.

“I’ll take it,” Ava whispers back. “Is it what you wanted it to be?” 

And Beatrice says yes, what must be a hundred times, and she understands now. She understands that touching the one you love is a gift to yourself as much as it is to them.

  
  


****

> _Ava,_
> 
> _The scent of your hair is still on my fingers. The sighs, our sighs, our happiness, still echo in my ears. You are the sweetest thing that I have ever touched. You are the spring of Paris made manifest, and the pain of the past made into joy._
> 
> _Know that I will break sometimes. Know that I will be afraid sometimes. It will be part of the process as we stumble toward one another. But never doubt that the pleasure of drawing close to you is both genuine and exquisite. Never doubt that I too am discovering the impulses to please, to serve, to bring sweetness and joy to you._
> 
> _I move slowly because I want to dwell in every inch of you. I want to know you fully, and such knowledge can only come slowly. Please never stop surprising me, never stop being the wondrous, anomalous, beautiful undoing of my preconceptions._
> 
> _Good night, my beloved._


	4. Like Clusters of Grapes on the Vine

“Camilla says you play the violin.” 

“I do.”

“Play something for me?”

Ava is sitting casually on the edge of Beatrice’s bed, bouncing one of her heels against the floor. Beatrice smiles at the habits and qualities about her that are sometimes a little childlike. Her newness is a charm. “I can’t believe she told you.” 

“Oh, yeah, she really did you dirty there, telling me how amazing you are. Come on.” 

So Beatrice takes the violin from its case. It’s a fine instrument, and she has maintained it, though she warns, “I haven’t touched it in a bit.” 

Ava dismisses her. “Pfffft.” 

The depth of its wood grain is like amber in the afternoon light, its neck straight and delicate, and she runs her hand over its sumptuous curves before picking it up and laying it between her cheek and shoulder. She smells it, wood, dust and rosin, and the music swells within her before she has even gotten a grip on the bow.

Instinctively, without even thinking, she lays the bow against the strings and begins to play the first of Clara Schumann’s “Three Romances for Violin,” a piece so achingly beautiful she has on occasion made herself well up with tears at it when she executes it properly. When the first note sounds from the instrument, Ava sits up, startled, as if not quite expecting the instrument’s voice to be so strong, nor so emotive. Beatrice takes the theme through its paces, and as she plays, the passions she has long been loath to express come pouring through the instrument, and the melody that issues from the violin’s chest is wrought with all the stirrings that lay within her own. It winds around her, around them both, and Ava has stopped breathing as she listens. 

Beatrice has not played for some time, not since Shannon’s death, which had been one more brick on a mountain of them, weighing on her, admonishing her for wanting anything of her own. The violin is now alive in her hands, and as she draws the bow back and forth across the strings, pressing her fingertips into the delicate neck and quivering to produce a vibrato that registers deep within her gut, it gives voice to that ache. It speaks more clearly than words ever could. She closes her eyes and allows it to take over. 

When she draws the final notes out, they lay in the air for a moment, and then there is silence. She opens her eyes to find Ava looking at her with tears on her cheeks, looking at her with a new understanding of what lives in her soul. Slowly, Beatrice lays the violin back down in its case, and Ava comes to her, takes her face between her hands. “You’re so beautiful,” is all she can say, but Beatrice has come to recognize that there is more she wants to express and doesn’t know how yet. 

She understands their pattern now. Ava will come back to her with an action. Beatrice cannot help but anticipate it.

  
  
  


****

  
  
  
  


“I don’t get it, what does God have against sex anyway?” 

Lilith looks at Ava sidelong and says nothing.

Ava persists. “Look, I mean, Jesus, right? Mary had to be a virgin? Why? What’s so bad about sex? I mean, he gave us the… parts, right? So what’s his problem?” 

Mary, who is poking through a card catalog nearby, muffles her laughter with an unsubtle cough.

Lilith sighs. “Christ is not a good example. If you actually read the whole thing–” She jabs a long, black fingernail into the pages of the bible in front of Ava. “–you’d know there’s a lot more to it than that.” 

“Like what?” Ava challenges. She doesn’t believe her. 

“People who are married,” Lilith says. “Solomon and his wife were desperately in love. That’s a different thing.” 

Ava frowns. “What do you mean?” 

Irritably, Lilith flips through Ava’s bible and points to a passage. “Read that.” 

Ava still needs to mutter under her breath when she reads: 

_“How beautiful you are and how pleasing,_

_my love, with your delights!_

_Your stature is like that of the palm,_

_and your breasts like clusters of fruit._

_I said, “I will climb the palm tree;_

_I will take hold of its fruit.”_

_May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine,_

_the fragrance of your breath like apples,_

_and your mouth like the best wine…”_

She stops and looks up at Lilith, eyes wide. “That’s like, seriously sexy.” 

Lilith isn’t the type to roll her eyes, but Ava can tell that if she were, she would. “Sex is contextual.”

“You mean consensual?” 

“No, contextual. Solomon and his wife are married. They’re made for each other. They love each other deeply. So in their case, it isn’t considered sinful. But that’s their context.” 

“OK but, like, Sodom and Gomorrah?”

“Yes, party sex. Orgies. Rapes. That’s on the naughty list.” 

“OK, but explain why Mary had to be a virgin.” 

Lilith sighs. “You’re exhausting, and we will discuss that another day.” 

“God liked magic tricks back in the day,” Mary calls from where she stands at the card catalog. “She wasn’t a virgin because sex was bad, but because he didn’t want any mistake about whose baby Jesus was.” 

“Mary drags God onto Josephus Springer like, ‘It’s your baby!’” Ava chortles.

“Idiot,” Lilith mutters. 

Ava marks the passage in the bible and takes it back to her room to read the rest.

  
  
  


*****

  
  


Ava appears at Beatrice’s door later that night. She’s a cloud of fragrances, all mixed together, that Beatrice can’t quite place. Is she wearing perfume? Is it incense? None of it is quite right. It’s a jumble as she lets Ava in. Beatrice still wears her habit, but has already abandoned the headgear for the night.

Beatrice moves to embrace Ava, but Ava puts a hand up. “Wait,” she says, “I want to play a little game.” 

Perplexed, Beatrice follows her to the bed. Ava lays herself down on it, and points to a very specific spot on her forehead. “See if you can tell me what that scent is, right there.” 

Beatrice sits on the edge of bed, and leans down, inhaling at the exact spot that Ava indicated. Suddenly, now that she is very close, a scent distinguishes itself. She lingers for a moment, lets her breath fall on Ava’s forehead before pulling back again. “Floral,” she mutters. “Like lilies?” 

Ava grins. “Good.” 

“What on earth–?”

“Uh-uh,” Ava says impishly. She points to another spot, this time, at the hinge of her right jaw, near her ear. “Now try here.” 

Beatrice leans across Ava’s body, very much aware of her warmth, and gets very close to the indicated place. Once again, one fragrance comes into focus. She breathes it in. “This one is familiar,” she murmurs, in no rush to draw back. “Roses?” She asks it with her lips close to Ava’s neck, not ready to pull away yet. 

“You’re good,” Ava purrs. She pats Beatrice’s shoulder. “Okay, next one.” 

Beatrice reluctantly pulls back. 

Ava tilts her head to one side and points to a spot on her throat. “Try this one,” she says, her finger on one of the pulsing veins in her neck. “This one should be hard.” 

Beatrice decides she loves this game. She leans down, places her face a hair’s breadth from Ava’s soft throat, and inhales. “Pomegranate,” she says instantly. “I could hardly mistake that for anything else.” 

“How could you know that?” Ava demands. 

“A favorite of my mother’s,” Beatrice says with a chuckle. “I know, what are the odds.”

Ava harumphs. Recovering quickly, she tilts her head to the other side and points to a spot on her neck, just below her jaw. “Try this one.” 

Beatrice leans down again, not working very hard to support her own weight, letting herself lean into Ava, dwelling in being close to her. She tilts her face down and lingers close to the place on Ava’s neck, and breathes in. Instantly, a strange calm comes over her. She knows that scent better than any other. “Myrrh,” she says. The smell of prayers and consecrations.

She doesn’t move. She stays close and breathes in again, and then out. Conscious of their closeness, she decides she’s fine where she is. She breathes Ava in, and then breathes out on the tender skin of her neck. Ava breathes in deeply when Beatrice breathes out. There is a flow to how they are together just now. 

“Do you have any more?” she whispers after a few minutes. 

“Just one.” 

Beatrice takes a long pause, not quite willing to pull away again, but she has committed to Ava’s game. She draws back. Ava puts a finger to her lips. “See if you can tell what’s on my breath.” 

They share a long, warm look. Beatrice leans in, lingering close to Ava’s lips. Ava breathes in, and then slowly breathes out through her mouth, and something sweet and fruity fills Beatrice’s sense. “Apples?” she asks. 

She doesn’t really care what it is. She is sharing breath with Ava. It is the closest she has ever been with anyone. 

“Yeah,” Ava sighs. 

Beatrice inhales her sigh, and exhales a sigh onto Ava’s lips. They look at each other, and Beatrice knows the longing must be written on her face. 

“You’ve been reading,” Beatrice says.

“Yeah.” 

“The Song of Solomon.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you picked these fragrances.” 

Ava answers with lines that Beatrice knows:

_“Open to me, my sister, my darling,_

_my dove, my flawless one._

_My head is drenched with dew,_

_my hair with the dampness of the night.”_

Beatrice chuckles, and answers with another:

_“You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride;_

_you have stolen my heart_

_with one glance of your eyes,_

_with one jewel of your necklace.”_

Beatrice’s heart pounds. They share space, breath, words. Ava has taken the trouble to learn a language that Beatrice knows like she knows her own name. Beatrice wants more than anything to close the smallest distance between their mouths and taste Ava’s lips. But she hesitates. 

“You’re afraid?” Ava guesses. 

“A little, yes.” 

“Don’t worry, it’ll be good.” Mischief twitches across Ava’s lips. “I mean, I haven’t had any complaints.” 

Beatrice chuckles silently. “You’ve kissed one person.” 

“Yeah, and he didn’t complain!” Ava softens. “But it’ll be good. You’ll be good.” 

“I’m afraid,” Beatrice says after a moment of forgetting herself and breathing in the apple scent on Ava’s breath, “that it will be too good. That I’ll give too much of myself all at once. More than I’m ready for.”

Ava shakes her head. She slides her hands up Beatrice’s neck and cups her face as she did earlier. “I won’t let you.” Her fingers creep up into the many pins that fasten Beatrice’s hair in its tidy condition. “Let me take these out? I want to feel your hair.” 

“Yes,” Beatrice says, and her excitement edges upward. 

Ava plucks one out, and then another, and then another. She frowns a little as she continues her project. “How many of these things have you got in there?” 

“Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing we’re not in a hurry.” 

“Not in a hurry is pretty much the essence of our situation,” Ava says. Beatrice leans down and rests her forehead against Ava’s while Ava pulls the last of the pins out of her hair. The waiting is not a burden. They are close. Ava is touching her. They are sharing themselves.

But eventually, her hair is liberated, and Ava is able to rake her fingers into it. Blissful, eyes closed, Beatrice rests precisely where she is, and enjoys that. She turns her head to the side and presses in, brushing her cheek against Ava’s, moving slowly and savoring that gentle closeness. She nuzzles, first Ava’s cheek, and then her nose, and then her lips. She brushes her lips against Ava’s so softly, it’s hardly more than a breath. Her heart leaps. 

Ava lifts her head and nuzzles back, and again, brushes the softest of touches against Beatrice’s lips. “It’s easy,” she whispers. 

And it is. Their kisses ripen like a fruit, growing fuller and warmer and more each time. They grow slowly, minute by minute, and Beatrice is overflowing with new aches, new longings, new joys. Ava’s fingers play in her hair, and their mouths find and learn each other, one infinitesimal bit at a time. Never in her life has she known something so tender, so sweet, so real. It almost hurts.

Ava strokes her cheek with one delicate finger. She’s looking at Beatrice as if she hung the very stars. No-one has ever looked at her this way. 

“Bea?”

“Yes?” 

“What if this is all it is?” she teases. 

Beatrice kisses her again. “Shut up.”

  
  


****

  
  


> _Ava,_
> 
> _You have gone, and I cannot sleep._
> 
> _You are too sweet a delight, and it leaves me awake, trembling at the thought of it, of what it means, of where I wish it to go, and what will become of my soul in the end._
> 
> _My hungers are awake now, and I cannot banish them. These kisses, they will not be all there is, and it frightens me. I ache at the thought of feeling all of you, with all of myself, and at the inevitability of it. Where you go, I will follow, but I remain afraid that I follow you into dark._
> 
> _God has no answers for me when I pray. When I fold my hands and close my eyes, all that exists in the dark of my mind is you, your laughing eyes, your smirking mouth, the taste of apples and the scent of honeysuckle, lilies and myrrh. You have seized all of my senses, completely and utterly._
> 
> _“Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you:_
> 
> _Do not arouse or awaken love_
> 
> _until it so desires.”_
> 
> _You have done both. It must be that love’s time has come for me. Stay with me through my fears and sorrows. My love for you is stronger than storms._


	5. The Chain of Command

It has been a long time since Beatrice has found herself kneeling in the pews, weeping at the cross above the altar. Her heart is in spasms as she prays, seeking God’s love, but only finding Ava’s. She wonders if she has lost God altogether. She wonders if she ever had God to begin with, or only an idea of Him. Perhaps, she thinks, she has ever been a lost daughter. 

Stained glass throws colors across the marble floors, and the incense burns in the brass thuribles, suffusing the room. Myrrh. It will forever smell like kissing Ava, now. 

Soft footsteps cross the floor. Two feet, and a cane. It’s Mother Superion. Then comes the creak of the pew behind Beatrice as she takes her seat. “Sister Beatrice,” she says evenly, “you seem troubled.” 

“Yes, Mother Superion.” She sniffles and lowers her head, trying to gather herself up in the presence of the elder nun. 

“You are speaking to God about it, hm?”

“I am.” Beatrice sniffs again. “I’m not sure he’s listening.” 

“Hm,” Mother Superion answers. “And are you?” 

“What?”

“Listening. To God.”

Beatrice comes up short. “I… I am trying.” 

“If you ask God something, and are waiting for a lightning bolt, I think you may be disappointed. He stopped doing that a long, long time ago. If you ask God for something, look at your life. That’s where the answer is.” She points over Beatrice’s shoulder at the cross. “Not up there.” 

“I just want to know if what’s happening in my life is wrong,” Beatrice says forlornly.

Mother Superion sighs. “My child, I'm sure you know what I’m supposed to tell you. But you have your doubts, now, as do I. It’s not the Church that saves souls, it’s God. You know that. You told Duretti that –rather bold of you, I would add– and you don’t need me to remind you.” 

“So what am I to do, then?” 

The pew creaks again as Mother Superion gets up. “Go for a walk. Say a few Hail Marys if you think it will help. The chain of command rises to God, no?” 

She shuffles away. 

Beatrice wipes her eyes. 

  
  


****

  
  


Ava wears a dust mask and rubber goggles, watching Mary work in her little woodshed behind the rectory. She’s carving some intricate latticework into the legs of a table she built herself, and the air is full of sawdust. The details are tiny, modeled after the marginalia that Ava has seen on some of the illuminated manuscripts that Beatrice once showed her: tiny knights fighting giant snails, strange, huge bunnies, saints. “Who’s that for?” 

Mary doesn’t answer. 

Ava looks at a wooden likeness of Shannon in full armor. It stands in a still, golden shaft of light coming in through a small window near the ceiling. Mary has carved each link of chainmail, and the skin of her face is sanded smooth. “You really loved her,” Ava comments.

Mary stops carving. “Yeah, I did.” 

“I mean… you  _ loved _ her. You don’t do art like this for someone you just like a lot.” 

Mary looks up, pained. “I loved her more than anybody.” 

Ava understands. She has long suspected that Shannon was more to Mary than just her leader. “How long were you together?” 

Mary sets the chisel down. “A few years. It was hard.” 

Ava is intrigued. “How?” 

Mary looks at her. She doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Look, please, I… I want to know how you guys made it work.” 

“Because of you and Beatrice.” 

“Yeah.” 

Mary relents. Ava suspects that she doesn’t discuss this with anyone. “Well, she took vows. I didn’t. We didn’t expect the same things from ourselves.” 

“Did you guys… have a… a physical relationship?” 

Mary smirks a little. “You mean did we have sex?”

“Well, not just that, but yeah.”

“Not that often. Shannon would enjoy it, but it just wasn’t usually worth the guilt that she would have afterwards. But we had a lot of other ways to love each other.” 

Ava nods vigorously. “Yeah, we do too.”

“You wanna sleep with Bea?”

Ava struggles with this question. She doesn’t want to give a wrong answer. “I do. But… not if it’s going to hurt her.” 

“I know she has a lot to figure out if she’s gonna make this work with you. Just like me and Shannon, you guys have different expectations for yourselves. Just make sure you want it for the right reasons.”

“I want it because I love her. Real love. Not hormones. I … want all of her, and that’s part of the ‘all’ that I want. I swear I could live without it but... then there’s a piece of her that I don’t get to have, and that’s…”

“It hurts,” Mary supplies. “I get that.”

She hunts around on the floor and finds a stencil and a pencil. She hands it to Ava and points to another table leg. “Line that up with the top of the leg, and draw in the stencil lines for me. If you’re gonna hang around here picking my brain, you can make yourself useful.” 

Ava takes the items and does as she’s told. “So what do I do? With Beatrice?” 

“Try talking,” Mary says dryly.

Ava groans. “I suck at talking. Beatrice writes me these beautiful letters and I don’t know how to do that, so I just… do stuff that I think will help, that I think she’ll like.”

“Does it work?” 

Ava wedges the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth as she stencils in some scrollwork, as carefully as she knows how. “I think so?” 

“Well, that’s cool, but you gotta talk. You gotta just tell her what you’re feeling.” 

“Oh sure,” Ava grumbles, staring intently at her pencil work, which she has little faith in. “Talking. No big deal, easy peasy.” 

  
  


****

  
  


It’s the middle of the night when a knock comes at Beatrice’s door. Ava has been scarce most of the day, but she knew that Mary had been putting her to work. She opens the door a crack and finds Ava standing there. “It’s late,” she says with a smile. 

“I know. I wouldn’t have knocked but I saw the candlelight from under the door so I figured you were still awake.”

“I’m in my pyjamas, you know.” 

Ava’s face lights up. “Let me see.” 

Beatrice gives her a perplexed look and opens the door all the way. She’s in soft flannel men’s pajamas, pants and shirt with little buttons. “Why? They’re nothing special.” 

“Yeah, but… you’re always in your habit or in your tactical clothes or your training gi. You’re always either Sister Beatrice or Badass Beatrice.” She gazes fondly at her for a long moment. “This is just Beatrice. I like it.” 

Beatrice moves aside and lets Ava in. She takes her in a gentle embrace, notices the lingering scents of wood that still hang on Ava’s skin even though she has clearly washed since working with Mary. She is warm, soft. Beatrice places her palm on Ava’s back, over where the halo sits, and feels the warm ring of it through her clothes and skin. It is a balm to her troubled soul. 

Ava draws back, touches her face for a moment, then looks down at the small silver crucifix that Beatrice wears at all times, even underneath her habit when she wears her larger one. She fingers it cautiously, then, holding it between her fingers, she lifts it from Beatrice’s chest, lowers her head, and kisses it. Beatrice looks at her wonderingly. 

“A kiss means love and respect,” Ava says carefully. “You wouldn’t be the same you without that. Without your faith. So, I love that. I love everything about you. Everything.” 

Beatrice takes Ava’s face between her hands, kisses her softly. “I haven’t given you everything.” 

Ava smiles at her. “Mary says it was hard for her and Shannon, that Shannon never forgave herself for what they had together. I don’t want anything from you that’s going to hurt you to give. But I do want as much of you as I can get.” 

“I snore, you know,” Beatrice says. Her eyes are misted over at Ava’s sincerity. 

“Yes. I’ll take it.” 

“And I’ll never stop correcting you if you take God’s name in vain.” 

“Yeah, I know. I’ll take that too.” She touches her forehead to Beatrice’s, and speaks in a way that tells Beatrice she has thought about all of this a great deal. “This, us together, is already perfect. What we share is already special, and not for anyone else’s eyes. It doesn’t need to be more.” 

A sticky warmth rises in Beatrice’s chest, and she kisses Ava again, not quite so gently this time. “But what if I want it to be?” 

“Then we make it something you can handle.” Ava stops talking to kiss her some more, ardent and sweet. Her lips are soft and taste of mint toothpaste. “The way it works, I think, is that you have to love yourself half as much as I do. You have to see yourself like I do. You’re amazing, yeah, but … it’s not the brains, or the ass-kicking, or the violin, or the love letters. It’s you. Just you. You loved me first, you know? You showed me just a little bit of your heart, and that was all it took. I had to love you back, because it was… it was that beautiful.” She reaches up into Beatrice’s hair and begins to pull the pins out of it. “You need to love yourself, but until you do, I’m going to love you enough for both of us.”

A swell of desire rises in Beatrice’s heart, and impatiently, she reaches up into her hair to help Ava with the removal of the pins, tipping her head now and then to plant little kisses on Ava’s mouth. Beatrice cannot say where the pins end up, but soon Ava’s fingers are raking through her hair, and they kiss without hesitation. 

They tumble into the bed, and Beatrice’s whole body is like a struck match. Her mouth softens, opens to Ava’s, and she lets herself taste Ava’s lips and tongue; warm, wet, inviting, sweet, human. She fumbles with her buttons, and the pyjama top falls open. Ava tips her onto her back, and Beatrice closes her eyes, luxuriating in the feeling of Ava’s mouth lovingly, slowly working down her neck; soft kisses, gentle sucking, careful tasting and savoring of the sensitive skin. It is difficult not to gasp at each one, so Beatrice tangles her hands in Ava’s hair and holds on as she explores this new frontier. 

Ava pauses when she reaches Beatrice’s chest. The shirt hangs open, but covers her breasts. Ava looks up at her, thinking for a moment. “Are you alright?” she finally asks. 

Beatrice nods. She wants whatever Ava is ready to do right now. 

Ava smiles, shimmies down the bed a little, and, not moving the shirt aside any more than it is, she lays a kiss on Beatrice’s stomach. A shock of delight goes through her, and Ava chuckles at the little shiver it produces. When Ava does it again, a quiet moan escapes Beatrice’s lips. She suspects that at the moment, nearly any place Ava touched would have the same effect. But nevertheless, the kisses on her stomach send her into shivers of joy, and a tight knot of pleasure builds somewhere low in her belly. 

Ava stops and looks up again, sleepy-eyed and beautiful, lips wet with kisses, and asks again: “Are you alright? Is this too much?” 

Beatrice is flushed from her cheeks to her stomach. Every nerve in her body wants Ava’s mouth on it. Her breathing is tight. “I…want you,” she manages to whisper. “All of you.” 

Ava smiles. She plants a little kiss on Beatrice’s stomach, and then climbs back up the bed. Settling on top of her, nose to nose, she gazes affectionately into Beatrice’s face. “Yeah, I want you too. All of you. I wanna be naked with you, I wanna have mediocre sex together, and get better at it together, the whole thing. There’s no part of you that I don’t want. But I don’t want to be something you have to forgive yourself for.” 

Ava’s words cut through the cloud of desire. Beatrice knows she’s right. She doesn’t want that weight laying on Ava’s shoulders. She doesn’t want this to happen in a way that either one of them will regret. “I do want you,” Beatrice promises.

“Yeah, I kinda got that,” Ava says with a little smirk. “But what do you say we slow our roll a little bit? I wasn’t in a hurry yesterday, and I’m not today.” 

Beatrice taps Ava’s shoulder, and Ava rolls off of her. She slides out of her top, folds it, and sets it on the bedside table. Ava is staring at her in genuine shock, her eyes traveling over Beatrice’s shoulders, breasts, waist and stomach. “Holy shit,” she mutters. “You’re fucking beautiful. No wonder you hide under all that stuff, if you didn’t you’d have the entire order all over you.”

Beatrice is embarrassed to think of herself this way and looks away, at the far corner of the room. “Do you suppose we could… just hold each other? Like this?” 

“Without feeling each other up? I can try.” 

Ava is instantly out of her t-shirt. Beatrice will not admit to imagining what Ava’s body might look like until now, but it is everything she might have hoped. She is a gift of love. She is a French statue. She is a breeze in the Jardin de Tuileries. 

Somehow, it isn’t as hard as either of them thinks it will be to lie together in each other’s arms this way. Beatrice lays down on her back again, and Ava curls up against her, arm around her waist, leg thrown over hers. Her head rests on Beatrice’s chest, just above the swell of her breast, and her breath is warm against Beatrice’s skin. This is the real point of it all, Beatrice thinks. To have someone this close to you. To share parts of yourself that you share with no-one else. 

She falls asleep holding Ava, and for once, she feels a sense of peace.

  
  


****

  
  


> _ Ava, _
> 
> _ Last night I slept peacefully for the first time in months, and I have no doubt it was holding you in my arms that did it. You and the gentle persistence of your love insist on healing my wounds and soothing my aching spirit, and how can I say no?  _
> 
> _ I was a garden locked up, as the verses say, a sealed fountain. A spring enclosed. And you have unlocked me. You have rolled the stone away from the spring, unsealed the fountain. I flow with feeling, your most precious gift to me.  _
> 
> _ Forgiveness comes from love, and that, you have in abundance.  _
> 
> _ Mother Superion says that if one wants to know the will of God, one must look at the condition of one’s life. Perhaps I have been too filled with self-loathing to hear God’s love, so he sent you to tell it to me in his stead.  _
> 
> _ My sweet beloved, you have roused passions that I have been afraid to let myself feel, but you have also brought me peace. Love will bring such things, if one is open to receive it. _


	6. Sin and Redemptipn

Beatrice’s first orgasm happens almost by accident.

They have settled into a rhythm that is precious and uniquely theirs. In the daytimes, they train, and read, and smile at one another over meals. In the evenings, they lounge together in one of their rooms. Beatrice plays the violin often for Ava, who likes to lay sprawled on the bed, looking at her starry-eyed. They read, or rub each other’s backs and feet, kiss each other’s hands, talk about their secrets, and share their mundane thoughts. 

Often, they take off their shirts and wrap around each other in the bed, and kiss with soft passion, and tell each other over and over how much they are loved. Beatrice is almost starting to believe it. She smiles more, now, and the more comfortable they become with this, the more intensely her body responds to the gentle, thoughtful way that Ava loves her. She can lie in Ava’s arms and the mere fact of Ava trailing her fingers up and down Beatrice’s back sends her into fits of shivers. Ava can speak to any part of her, and make trails of heat bloom along her skin. 

It is not quite sex, though it is leavened with desire. They leave each other’s beds smelling of one another’s skin and hair. It is its own form of closeness.

It has been weeks of this, and they are in Ava’s bed, wrapped up in each other, a tangle of bare arms, chest to chest, hip to hip, kissing each other’s necks and shoulders. As the violin is Beatrice’s instrument of choice, Beatrice’s body is Ava’s, and Ava’s warm hands are playing electric symphonies at the small of Beatrice’s back. She has thrown her leg over Ava’s, trying to grip Ava’s body with her own, trying to press into her, melt into her, shifting to bring them ever closer, when suddenly, an overflow of sweetness bubbles up from below, and she gasps. 

She clutches at Ava with all of her limbs, eyes closed, mouth open, overwhelmed for a moment with the kind of blinding ecstasy she has tried but failed to imagine. A high little moan slips out; a sound of joy, surprise, and wonder. Warmth floods every limb and digit. Even her lips blush. When she opens her eyes, Ava is looking at her with eyes dancing, both amazed and amused. “Was that what I think it was?” 

Beatrice doesn’t know what to do but laugh. “I think so.” They kiss for a moment, giddy, still laughing, and Beatrice’s skin is tingling all over. Ava’s body, which always feels good, feels like heaven against hers now. They had not been pursuing anything in particular except the closeness. Bemused, she looks at Ava. “Did we just have sex?” 

Ava snickers. “I think it depends who you ask.” 

Beatrice wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think I want to ask anyone.” 

They laugh until tears run down onto the pillow, and fall asleep holding each other.

  
  
  


****

  
  


> _ Ava, _
> 
> _ It occurs to me that I am only just learning what “all of you” really means.  _
> 
> _ I have placed a false barrier between how we choose to share our love. I have regarded our bodies as delineated like war zones, and the forms of intimacy segregated between what is and is not sex. I am coming to believe that it does not work that way. Not when you love all of someone.  _
> 
> _ I belong to you, Ava, and have for some time. What that means is that all of you excites me. Your eyes, your laugh, your newness, your pain. Your heart. All of these things excite me no less than your skin, your lips, your hands. And so, as the truth of loving you wholly becomes more real to me, it comes naturally that I should respond more easily to you. When you washed my feet, it was lovemaking. When I plucked the ribbon from your hair, it was lovemaking. When I explored the scents that you lay across your body for nothing more than my delight, it was lovemaking.  _
> 
> _ All of these things which are intimate and private, they are ours to keep and treasure. And as such, they are ours to anoint as more beautiful and more special as we see fit. Their value and meaning is no-one’s determination to make. Not even God’s. _
> 
> _ The accidental bliss of orgasm is one I intend to repeat at some point, and one that I would like to give to you as well. But as I take in the depth and breadth of this love of ours, I feel more and more that it is not the point. It is treated like the holy grail or like a great transgression, and it is neither. For us, it is a kind of raw pleasure that we may share in more than one particular way.  _
> 
> _ My thoughts of you at night grow more specific, as I grow more comfortable with what we have and more honest with myself. If a kiss is a show of love and respect, then I am clear on wanting to love and respect every bit of you, every inch. Your body is beautiful, both because it is objectively so, and also because it is yours. It was created to be the vessel for the soul of the one I love more than anyone. It was created with care, and made to delight the eye. I ache to show reverence to the creation.  _
> 
> _ I ache to lay unnumbered kisses on your skin; to remove every last barrier between us; to kiss your breast which is made to fit my mouth; to curl my fingers around your hips and feel their muscles flex and reach at my touch; to lose myself in the valley between your thighs, which is made to accept my touch. It is an act of worship, every which way that we choose to make love to each other. And that, my dearest, is the point. The union of spirit and body and soul. That is divine love, and I have never felt more fervent, more devoted, in my life. _
> 
> _ I need no-one to define for me what “counts” or does not. I would have us know each other in every way, and choose as we wish what ways we may give our love to each other.  _

  
  
  


*******

  
  


> _ My love, _
> 
> _ I understand now why it is easy to get confused and think that sex is the pinnacle and the point of it all. When you abandoned yourself for that moment last night, the bliss on your face was transcendent. My heart wanted to leap out of my chest at the sight of you, unraveled and giving yourself over to that ecstasy. And the aftermath, how your body went so loose and soft for me… I can understand why people can think that this is everything. Lying naked in your bed, with you utterly spent and given completely to me was a greater pleasure than my own.  _
> 
> _ But it remains a means to an end, and that end is the intimacy. The closeness. I remain steadfast in wanting all of you. Sometimes that will mean sex, and sometimes it will not. _
> 
> _ I would be remiss, however, if I did not tell you that I love the process of unlocking this code, learning the secrets of your body just as I have done your heart. The puzzles of where to kiss and how, what to touch and when, are no less diverting than any I have ever attempted. You have tempted me with games before, my love, and this one is ongoing. The exercise of improving at this is one I face with great anticipation. _
> 
> _ However, this is one case in which even “mediocre” is still quite wonderful.  _

  
  


******

  
  


> _ My love,  _
> 
> _ I will probably never stop writing these letters because I know that you love them. But it has been a moment since my last because we have struck a balance. We have found a place to dwell in that is close to perfection. But that, I suppose, warrants saying too. _
> 
> _ Camilla likes to say that each of us needs something which is only ours, and it struck me as sad that after a year, you had not seemed inclined to mark your room or claim the space as yours in any way. But since we have been together, I have seen these trifles accumulate: a pot of hyacinths from Camilla, books of philosophy and theology from Lilith, a rough wood carving of a bird that you made with Mary’s instruction. Growing in the context of home and family is the pursuit which you have chosen. _
> 
> _ And to that end, you and I are the linchpin of this. I see and feel all the ways in which I and our love permeate your space, invisible and not. The box in which I presented you those first letters now lives on your bureau, and it is by now overflowing with the reams of words that I have given you as our love grows each day. I know that my scent is all over your bed, and the red silk ribbon that now dangles from your bedpost is both celebration and reminder of the power of our love to heal. I know that you have recorded me playing for you and that you listen to it when I am not there.  _
> 
> _ You and I have become a world unto ourselves. In our love for one another, we have made a place that is to our liking, one in which we can recover from the wounds of our respective pasts.  _
> 
> _ Healing sometimes comes with pain, but oh, it has come with so much pleasure too. You have shown me what it is to receive love, and to give it. Though I will never love myself a fraction as much as I love you, I have some inkling now of how to go about it. You have given me that along with so much else. _
> 
> _ You are everything to me. You are my sin and my redemption, my thrill and my tranquility. In your arms, I fall apart and am made whole again.  _
> 
> _ I grieve sometimes that I lost so much of my life to isolation, to a thousand self inflicted cuts, to self hatred and the coldness of closing myself off to the world. But my path has brought me to you. My wounds, my flaws and jagged edges fit perfectly with yours. Without those wounds, we could not heal together.  _
> 
> _ And the truth is, my love, we are young. Though life is often short for women in our vocation, we have time enough in front of us to savor every happiness together, drink every drop of what our intimacy has to offer. So, I would not wish away a single moment of my life. We were fashioned just so, meant to fit one another.  _
> 
> _ So come to my bed, my love, my light, my bright angel, my vessel of God. Place your skin next to mine and tell me that your love endures. Tell me what I already know; that we belong together. In this life, and the next.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for riding along with me on this little excursion through a beautiful and sacred love.
> 
> Please subscribe if you enjoyed, as I may write more. 
> 
> Also, I'm an artist and am in the process of making some pretty nice fanworks for this show. You can view the small but growing collection right here: https://tinyurl.com/y4jjjko7


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